Keltch Park, Subway Stained Glass, and the Old Bronx Borough Courthouse

If the Parks Department bestows a name upon a tree-lined sitting area by a subway station, it's a park.

Keltch Park along Jerome Avenue in The Bronx is a narrow, oddly shaped triangle with the elevated 4 Train above. It's been Parks Department property since 1899, but in 1944 it got the unusual distinction (unusual among NYC parks) of a name honoring a hero of World War Two rather than of World War One. Robert Keltch was serving aboard a navy ship in 1943 when a German U-boat torpedoed it "just 90 miles east of Elizabeth City, New Jersey," as the Parks Department website details. The war did get closer to our shores than most of us who weren't alive then usually imagine.

Upstairs at the 170 St. station, there's more than the 4 Train. These striking stained glass windows are well worth a visit. They're by Dina Bursztyn, as the invaluable blog Scouting New York helpfully informs me.

Coincidentally, it was an art exhibition that led us to happen upon Keltch Park in the first place. We'd come to The Bronx to see the crumbling Old Bronx Borough Courthouse, open until July 19 for an art show presented by No Longer Empty.

It's a double whammy: a rare look inside a fine building left to decay for decades, and a superb show, some of whose art incorporates the debris from the building itself.

"Alien Souvenir Stand" is by Ellen Harvey:

And this installation, which includes sound, is by Daniel Neumann and Juan Betancurth:

Beth Campbell and Adam Helms were among the other artists whose work impressed us. I know, I've strayed pretty far from the park theme – this isn't an arts blog. But this exhibition, in this building, is so extraordinary I had to cover it.

The High Bridge, Newly Reopened, and The Bronx's High Bridge Park

Despite its large size, dramatic terrain, and numerous facilities, Manhattan's High Bridge Park (which we last visited in 2013) has for a long time been a dead end in one important sense: the High Bridge itself was closed. " Ever since 1960, the historic tall arched bridge over the Harlem River, built in the 1830s and '40s to host the aqueduct that carried upstate water across to Manhattan from The Bronx, has been sealed off.

Finally, two years later than originally planned, and with Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver in attendance but spoilsport Mayor de Blasio conspicuously absent, the High Bridge reopened to pedestrians and bicycles.

See the High Bridge Park Development Association website for a great 1879 drawing of the bridge from the Bronx side. It shows how the bridge looked before the middle section was replaced with a steel arch in 1927-28 so wider ships could get through. For a view from 2013 from Manhattan, showing the Bronx end of the bridge, with the original Roman-style stone arches, see the next photo:

And in June 2015: now, with people!

The Highbridge water tower on the Manhattan side is still inaccessible. The Urban Park Rangers at one time led occasional tours of the tower, but I can't find a current listing for any such.

For a bridge that's so high its very name attests to the fact, you have to descend a lot of stairs to get to the Manhattan-side entrance.

At this lower level a pleasant greenway runs parallel to the river below and offers a nice jungly view of the tower.

And there it is up ahead: the red-tiled walkway across the Harlem River.

The High Bridge may not span the most picturesque stretch of New York City's vast system of waterways, but it still provides some nice views. Wise planners even picked out fencing with a pleasing geometric pattern.

A series of plaques outline the High Bridge's long history…

…in contrast to this vintage manhole cover. Does it go down to the aqueduct beneath? I'd sure like to know.

I especially like the depiction of these workers. The guy inside the pipe looks Chinese. Is the guy on the ladder from Mexico? Whatever the case, the illustrations on these plaques deserve praise.

It's a pretty long walk in the hot sun, but at last: the Bronx side. And a lot fewer stairs at this end.

I'd be very interested to learn traffic numbers through the summer. Residents of the Highbridge neighborhood of The Bronx will be crossing to use Manhattan's big Highbridge Park. Going the opposite way will be Harlem residents who see the bridge as an extension of their park, as well as tourists from near and far who want to traverse the historic span and will mostly arrive from the Manhattan side. I hope someone's counting.

We've arrived at Highbridge Park, Bronx version. But there isn't much to this little park.

The handsome building on the left is the old Carmelite Monastery, now housing a Samaritan Village drug rehab center.

This frog is equipped to spit water from his mouth. Nothing was flowing at the moment. But he sits in a little channel that runs toward the aqueduct and suggests the original purpose of the magnificent High Bridge, now at last open again to the public.

Stuyvesant Oval and a Cormorant at Stuyvesant Cove

With apologies to the good people of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village on Manhattan's East Side, I here present to all and sundry your great pastoral oval. Your historic apartment complexes are on private grounds, I know. But since anyone can walk through any day, Stuyvesant Oval is fair game.

It would hardly be fair to keep one of New York City's finest fountains behind locked gates, anyway.

Seems whenever I get a good action shot in a city park, there's always a trash can photobombing me. The old lady in the first photo above, sitting peacefully reading a magazine, is undisturbed. But the guy below – well, I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about it. Good catch.

You call it an Oval. I call it a Park.

On the same walk we visited Stuyvesant Cove along the East River. I covered the Cove here back in 2010. How the years fly! But so do the birds. Ever since I saw a cormorant fishing that day off Stuyvesant Cove I always associate the Cove with those graceful black hunters. And on this day we had the extra treat of seeing one drying his or her wings.

There was plenty of East River seaplane activity too. Here's one just come in for a landing.

And then, I presume, back to the Hamptons with a new load of weekenders.

James J. Walker Park

I've passed by James J. Walker Park in the West Village many times, but never thought it of interest because it looked like little more than a big ballfield.

However, there's more to this unprepossessing one-and-two-thirds acres. And I'm not referring to the colorful life of the famous NYC mayor after whom it's named.

Jimmy Walker, Mayor of New York from 1926 to 1932 (and at one time an aspiring songwriter), led a flamboyant and controversial public life. But "Beau James" was but a teenager when the city acquired Trinity Church's St. John's Burying Ground in 1895, intended to convert the cemetery into a park.

In fact, the plan originated with the future mayor's father, Assemblyman William H. Walker.

More than 10,000 bodies had been interred here since 1812. Their fate would be much discussed 80 years later, as an article called "A Great Opening of Tombs" in The World from December 4, 1892 explained.

As transcribed here on the NYCNuts website, the paper reported that the elder Walker "said that the city would remove the bodies now in the cemetery and would do it very carefully and in a manner that could not offend and of the relatives of the dead."

But it seems it was not to be. As I understand it, the vast majority of the bodies – those that did not have families to claim them and arrange for reburial – are still there, beneath the ballfield, the pavement, the handball courts, the playground, and the sitting area, which I discovered sandwiched between the fields.

When I slipped in early on a recent Sunday afternoon, there were people using the handball courts, and kids in the playground.

No one was using the bocce court, though. It's one of only two Manhattan bocce ball locations listed by the Parks Department. It's also one of the locations listed and presumably used by the good people at NYC Bocce.

Whatever you do, don't confuse bocce with pétanque, which you can find at Bryant Park. Bocce is Italian; pétanque is French. (Although the word, Wikipedia informs me, is actually Occitan. Didn't know that was a language? You learn all kinds of stuff researching New York City's parks.)

Anyway, next time you're in the southern reaches of the West Village, stop by James J. Walker Park and give a thought to the memory of one of Gotham's most memorable mayors. Then give a thought to the memories of the thousands of people in the ground beneath your feet.

Railroad Park, The Bronx

Railroad Park in the Melrose neighborhood of The Bronx has one, just one, notable feature, and that's the abandoned railroad station at East 161 Street. Though the station is long abandoned, Metro North's tracks still run underground right by the park.

Opened in 1902, this humble three-quarters of an acre was named Melrose Park in 1920, and renamed Railroad Park only in 2001.

The compass rose in the pavement includes the signs of the zodiac. Nice touch.

A curving path sweeps around the small park.

Here's the view toward the north, away from the station:

It was starting to rain and it had been an energetic excursion, visiting five parks in a couple of hours. (See below for the other four.) Fortunately, seeing Railroad Park was the work of just a few minutes, so I didn't linger, and legged it back to the subway. There's a Railroad Park in Queens, too. That's for another day.

Franz Sigel Park

Another park that's an easy walk from Yankee Stadium in The Bronx is Franz Sigel Park, the rockiest and most forested of the area's green spaces (at least those you can enter without sneaking or blasting your way in).

To get there I started at Joyce Kilmer Park and the Bronx Supreme Court at 161st Street, and walked down Walton Avenue, which, like Broadway in Manhattan, was once an Indian path.

I passed the Congregation Hope of Israel building, which in its present condition isn't a very good advertisement for hope. According to BronxSynagogues.org, it closed in 2006. The same website explains that while over 360,000 Jews lived in the South Bronx in 1940, by 2007 the count had dropped to fewer than 2,500.

I approached the western entrance to the park, and the appealing vistas made me take several photos before I even went inside. But the rocky ground, the trees, the stone wall and steps, and the smell of rich earth full of life got me going. What can I say? It felt like a pretty grand entrance.

Historic, too. According to the Parks Department website: "During the Revolutionary War, George Washington, Count de Rochambeau, and their respective American and French military staffs, used a high rocky ridge at the site to monitor the movements of British troops camped alongside the Harlem River."

With a little imagination, you can picture Washington with a spyglass here.

Franz Sigel Park's modest heights don't offer sublime views today, but at least you can get a feel for their strategic value.

Troops on waiting-around duty would be more comfortable today:

Franz Sigel made his name in a different war. I knew the name looked familiar, and sure enough, there he is in the second volume of Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Michael Burlingame's tremendous biography, which I recently finished reading (and I'm not ashamed to admit it took a very long time).

Major General Sigel had good and bad moments during his Civil War duties in the Midwest. Unfortunately, he didn't look good at Wilson's Creek. Fortunately, he helped to win at Pea Ridge and end the Confederate threat against Missouri. Unfortunately, during the Spring Offensive of 1864 he got bogged down in the Shenandoah Valley.

Sigel's commission had been partly political, as Lincoln had constantly to soothe and placate the German-American constituency that had contributed to his election victory. In the book Burlingame calls the German "hypersensitive" and adds that Lincoln "tolerated Sigel's behavior because the general was popular with his countrymen, who formed an important voting bloc."

Sigel established himself in the U.S. after the German revolution of 1848. In 1852 he settled in New York City where he taught in public and German schools, joined the 5th New York Militia, and wrote, much like his fellow park commemoratee John Mullaly, for the newspapers, in Sigel's case the New York Times and the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung.

Over at Joyce Kilmer Park, I'd just seen the Lorelei Fountain, another mark of the German immigrant presence in The Bronx.

I've also learned that across the river, over on Riverside Drive in Manhattan, an equestrian statue by Karl Bitter (who was not German but Austrian) honors Sigel's contributions in the Civil War.

Towards the south end, near where the ballfields were added in the 1960s, Franz Sigel Park is bright and welcoming.

By contrast, an abandoned structure near the park's west side – an erstwhile bathroom facility? – looks like just the place for a mugging.

Here's one of the most common types of tree found in NYC, a London plane tree (Robert Moses loved to plant these), in a shape I've never before seen one stretch to.

On the way out, headed for the final leg of my Bronx parks excursion that day, I couldn't help capturing this composition of lamppost, tree, flowering bushes, and wall. Then it was on to Railroad Park.